Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
AAPC 2020
Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena Conference (AAPC) 2020
Click below to see our
presenters and their presentations on our youtube channel.
SUMMARY:
Due to the global pandemic, the SCU canceled the 2020 conference and instead opted this year to hold a series of live-stream video conference events in which those who participated were able to engage and ask questions during the presentations. The SCU invited the planned presenters (now speaking at the 2021 conference) and several guest speakers to present research on a number of topics related to the study of UAP. These videos are now available online via the SCU YouTube channel and here on the SCU Website. See below for the full collection of videos from the AAPC 2020 lectures series. (Please note: Presenters views, statements and opinions are of their own accord and do not necessarily reflect that of their company or affiliations.)
Aids to UAP Research and Investigation
SPEAKER:
Rich Hoffman
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
In today's mobile and connected world, application developers have built many applications and websites that can provide invaluable support to Ufologists and Researchers. This presentation will cover many of these key applications and websites in an effort to bring all up to date on what is available. Some applications are built for the Apple Products but may not be built for the other Operating Systems. Additionally, there are other easily purchased add on tools that can be added to these iPhones that will provide solid data in support of all. Some of these tools have costs, while others are free. A listing of these aids and other resources will be provided to participants.
BIO:
Rich Hoffman is a 25+ year Army Information Technology (IT) defense contractor with By Light IT Professional Services. He is a Senior Lead Architect working in the US Army Materiel Command Head Quarters at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama helping to shape the future directions of systems, networks and application hosting arrangements used within the Army. For the past 55 years, since his eighth grade science class and timed with the Lonnie Zamora sighting on 24 April 1964, Rich has been pursuing his primary interest in investigating, researching and lecturing on the subject of UFOs. He even had the opportunity to lecture to the Air Force on the subject at Wright Patterson, AFB.
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In June 2017, Rich left his position as MUFON Director, Strategic Projects, and Alabama State Director along with other positions within MUFON. He is still a Benefactor and as such is a lifetime subscribing only member. Currently, he is supporting a newly formed group called the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), a coalition of like-minded serious and dedicated scientists and professionals who want to solve the phenomena using scientific methodologies and leverage current technologies to do so.
A Statistical Treatment of the Drake Equation with the implications for the understanding of the Fermi Paradox and some hypotheses about UAP technology
SPEAKER:
Peter Reali
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
The presentation will demonstrate the results of a study of how factors in the Drake Equation can be used in a statistical sense to get an understanding of the probability of how often the Earth might encounter a Space Faring civilization. The lifetime of technological civilizations will be contrasted to the time that the Earth has had to develop an intelligent species with technological capability to be considered a rudimentary Space Faring Species. Further a sufficiently advanced species may have space faring technology of a nature that would be difficult to understand much less intercept. The lifetime of Earthly Civilizations, the differing motivations of Cultures, and the biological diversity of lifeforms will be used to inform the presentation.
BIO:
Peter Reali has a BS and MSEE from the University of California Berkeley. He had a long career in Silicon Valley as an electrical design engineer and manager of engineering projects. His specialty was in telecommunications and network and information technologies. He has designed systems including mobile telephone control systems, fiber optic ring networks, T1, T3, and Sonnet communication systems. He has done design in digital phase lock loop and network timing synchronization. He has done digital design using FPGA technologies to implement networking equipment. He has led project teams as an engineering manager. Currently he is retired and enjoys photography as a member of the Boise Camera Club, plays blues harmonica with the Boise Blues Society and does research with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. [SCU]
Peter Reali is a member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies [SCU]. He has been a seriously involved member since early 2018 and was attracted to join the SCU due to its serious mission to investigate this phenomenon in a scientific manner. He has done major sections in the SCU's most recent report "A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike Group Eleven's Encounter with an Anomalous Aerial Vehicle". He has been interested in this phenomenon for many years and has read extensively but not participated in group investigations due to time constraints with his career and the often sensational and unscientific methods employed by most organizations.
Time Travel, Hominin Evolution, and the UFO Phenomenon
SPEAKER:
Dr. Michael P. Masters
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
This talk cautiously examines the premise that ‘UFOs’ and ‘aliens’ may be our distant human descendants, returning from the future to study their own ancestral past. The suite of unique attributes characterizing the last 6 million years of hominin evolution on this planet are also ubiquitously described in credible reports of close encounters with ‘alien’ entities. Furthermore, the culture and technology of these bipedal humanoid beings, while clearly more advanced than our own, show signs of having been built upon the knowledge and tools that modern humans have developed throughout our own cultural past. This presentation seeks to demonstrate how the persistence of these same biological and cultural trends in hominin evolution, if continued into the future, may ultimately result in us becoming the ones piloting these disc-shaped craft, which are likely the very devices that allow our future progeny to venture backward across the landscape of time.
BIO:
Dr. Michael P. Masters is a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Tech in Butte, Montana. He received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from The Ohio State University in 2009, where he specialized in human evolutionary anatomy, archaeology, and biomedicine. Dr. Masters spent the following decade developing a broad academic background that unites the fields of anthropology, astronomy, astrobiology and physics, to examine the premise that UFOs and Aliens are simply our distant human descendants, returning from the future to study us in their own hominin evolutionary past. His new book, Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon, challenges readers to consider new possibilities while cultivating conversations about our ever-evolving understanding of time and time travel.
A Model of Interstellar Communities with Parameters Governing their Behavior
SPEAKER:
Dr. Kevin Knuth
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
Given what is now known about the populations of planets, and the generation, prevalence and distribution of complex organic molecules in space, it is now generally believed that it is unlikely that our civilization is alone in this galaxy. This idea is central to the concept of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), which has focused mainly on searching for radio signals originating from extraterrestrial communications, since it has been imagined that extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth would be an extremely unlikely event. However, the fact that we have now observed two natural interstellar objects, asteroid 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua) and comet C/2019 Q4 (2I/Borisov), passing through our solar system and that we ourselves are now working toward sending probes to the Alpha Centauri system by 2069, a century after the first Moon landings, suggests that other civilizations may make similar efforts. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider what one can infer about an interstellar civilization that may have visited Earth.
To establish prior probabilities for the general characteristics and capabilities of an interstellar civilization that has visited Earth, the travels of thousands of civilizations capable of interstellar travel are modeled and simulated. From the subset of those simulated interstellar civilizations that discover and visit Earth the distribution of their characteristics, such as the lifetime of the civilization, the distance of their civilized worlds from Earth, the number of star systems in their domain, and their basic ability to perform interstellar travel can be estimated. In addition to establishing realistic expectations about extraterrestrial visitors, these results also serve to inform about what characteristics and capabilities are required to create and maintain an interstellar presence.
BIO:
Prof. Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Albany (SUNY), and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy (MDPI). He is a former NASA research scientist having worked for four years at NASA Ames Research Center in the Intelligent Systems Division designing artificial intelligence algorithms for astrophysical data analysis. He has over 20 years of experience in applying Bayesian and maximum entropy methods to the design of machine learning algorithms for data analysis applied to the physical sciences. His current research interests include the foundations of physics, quantum information, inference and inquiry, autonomous robotics, and the search for and characterization of extrasolar planets. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has been invited to give over 80 presentations in 14 countries. Click here to find out more about Kevin: http://knuthlab.rit.albany.edu/
What is the Possible Connection between UAPs and Dark Matter?
SPEAKER:
Dr. Matthew Szydagis
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
Nearly 25% of the universe is composed of a mysterious substance known as dark matter (while 70% of the cosmos is something called “dark energy”) making it the height of hubris to think that we know all there is to know about physics and astronomy today. This talk will review the strong evidence behind the existence of dark matter, such as gravitational lensing, then discuss how it might lead to naturally occurring anomalies not involving craft piloted by intelligent beings at all. Next, I will cover the possibility for its use as fuel for interstellar flight, one that can be gathered in transit, given its natural abundance being 5x that of interstellar hydrogen. I will also mention the various different possibilities for what dark matter actually is, and current attempts to “harness” it, or at least identify it, here on Earth, in deep-underground direct detection experiments. Time permitting, I will venture into a discussion of dark energy, unrelated to dark matter except for the adjective dark meaning unknown, and how craft, terrestrial or otherwise, might also be able to tap into this as the real-life “zero-point vacuum energy.”
BIO:
Dr. Matthew Szydagis received his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago, then worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Davis. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University at Albany SUNY studying experimental particle astrophysics, in particular direct detection of dark matter, as well as general detector development for rare event searches. He was inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation as a child to become a scientist, and has always been fascinated by the UAP phenomenon, treating it seriously his entire life.
Download the Power Point Presentation
Analysis of the "Ubatuba" Material
SPEAKER:
Robert Powell
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT:
Robert Powell reviews recent testing he and his team completed on a 99.88% pure magnesium sample first obtained in the Ubatuba region of Brazil in 1957. Powell will reviewed the history of the sample, previous chemical testing, isotopic analysis of the magnesium as well as isotopic analysis of impurities in the sample that were in 100ppm levels, namely strontium, barium, zinc, and copper. Lastly he will discuss the meaning of the results that he obtained.
BIO:
Robert has a BS in Chemistry and is a former collegiate debater. He has 28 years’ experience in engineering management in the semiconductor industry. While working at Advanced Micro Devices he has taken numerous internal courses related to device physics, design of experiments, and statistical analysis. He helped Advanced Micro Devices develop its first flash memory technology that is used in today’s flash cards for cameras, PCs, video cameras, and other products. His experience includes managing a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory and managing a Research and Development group that worked on nanotechnology using atomic force microscopes, near-field optical microscopy, and other techniques. Robert is also a co-holder of four patents related to nanotechnology.
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Robert Powell is a Board member of the Scientific Coalition for Ufology (SCU). He was the Director of Research at MUFON from 2007-2017 and created MUFON's Science Review Board in 2012. Robert is one of two authors of the detailed radar/witness report on the “Stephenville Lights” as well as the SCU reports "UAP: 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico" and “A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike Group Eleven’s Encounter with an Anomalous Aerial Vehicle”. Robert is also a member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, the UFODATA project, and the National Space Society. Robert is active with FOIA requests to various government organizations to obtain information on historical cases and is a co-author of a book published in July 2012: UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry. Robert currently resides in Austin, Texas.